Day Thirty Three

Today was really rejuvinating. It got me excited to ride again. We rode 118 miles from Arlington, KS to Dodge City, KS.

We started the day with something unheard of: a tailwind. We cruised right along and did our first 35 miles or so to Pratt (where we had wanted to get last night) by about 12:45, and that was with a pretty late start.

We got lunch at Starvin Marvin's BBQ. We're far enough west now that this is real BBQ. We spent a while there reassessing our route. We realized that there is basically no road that runs east-west through New Mexico remotely near where we need it. After extensive discussion, we're back to Colorado. I'm excited, and think that it's a great change of plans.

We headed back out en route to Greensburg. They were wiped out by a tornado about 5 years ago, apparently. Thats when we hit our first real rain. The first storm was big and threatening. There was a lot of thunder and lighting, and hail, which hurts a lot to ride through. After a bit of clear weather, we got the second storm. This was basically the first storm, but worse. At one point, we had got hit by a gust that had to have been close to 90 or 100 mph. I got blown off the road, and Jason was literally blown off of his bike. Ah! But it cleared slowly from there. The positive to this heavy wind was that it was a tail wind (when it was steady.) We rode at about 20mph (which is FAST on our touring bikes) the whole 30 miles, so we made it there in about an hour and a half.

We got Mexican food there, and decided that we'd head to Dodge City, another 44 or so miles. We just couldn't pass up the tailwind, and didn't want to waste some easy miles.

So we headed out to Dodge City. It was a fun ride with the wind at out backs. We expected a third storm that we saw approaching, but we managed to out-run it or something, because it never did hit us. We made it to Dodge City around 8:40, took some pictures in town (it's a really cool western looking town) and got smoothies at McDonald's.

From there we headed to a park. It looked to busy, so we picked another and rode a little ways out of town to it. We're now camping behind a baseball field. Hooray for not paying for campgrounds!

Tomorrow: Somewhere along Rt. 50/400, trying to find a good place to spend the 4th.